A NEW INVERNESS
Skirting the south coast of Cape Breton one comes to one
of the places where Cape Breton gains an additional island
by the presence of a narrow water passage between two
sections of land. In this instance it is the work of man
and not of nature. As man found Cape Breton, the whole
four hundred and fifty square miles of water of the great
interior lake of Cape Breton was by the Little Bras d’Or on
the north-east coast, so that the early settlers wishing to
go from the Strait of Canso to Sydney, for example, had
to go and sail around the Cape Breton coast. This was
intolerable, considering that at St. Peter’s Bay, a neck of
land, half a mile wide, alone prevented a south-west passage
to and from the Bras d’Or, not only a saving of
hundreds of miles, but an abolition of the risks, sometimes
serious enough, of navigating the coast. A century ago
the importance of the scheme to cut a canal across this
narrow isthmus of St. Peter’s was realised, and in 1825 an
engineer named Hall surveyed the isthmus and made an
estimate for the cutting, which, I believe, was done for little
more than _£_20,000. Up to that time there had been a
portage here for very small craft. St. Peter’s was settled
by the French even before Arichat, and came very near
being settled as the site of the great French fortress
which was destined for Cape Breton, and which was ultimately
fixed at Louisbourg. At a spot in the locality
called Briquerie Point the clay was dry for the brick used
in building the town of Louisbourg, one of the very bricks
of which lies before me on the table as I write.
The canal is about 2400 feet long, with a breadth
of 55 feet, and a depth of 19 feet, debouching at its
northern end into St. Peter’s inlet, which in turn flows
into the widest part of the Bras d’Or. Through this canal
the steamer from Mulgrave passes along the Strait of Canso,
and through Lennox Passage to St. Peter’s.
The sites of both English and French forts are easily to
be traced at the present time. The latter, indeed, is close to
the canal, and the house of the lockmaster is upon it. The
old earthworks are plainly to be seen, and occasional finds
of bayonets and other evidences of warfare are made. A
few years ago a hooped cannon was unearthed, undoubtedly
belonging to a period long prior to the building of the
“Port Toulouse” fort here in 1749. It had probably been
the property of Denys de Fronsac, who had a settlement here
as long ago as 1636. Fort Granville, used after the English
occupation of Cape Breton, was on the hill to the east of
the canal lock. In this locality is Jordan Chapel island,
where the first chapel for the use of the Micmacs is said to
have been erected by the French over two centuries ago.
It is the scene of several interesting legends still related by
the Indians.
There is good bathing at St. Peter’s, and as a matter of
course there is every facility for boating, both in the bay and
the inlet at the other end of the canal. Excellent trout-fishing
may be had by going a short distance. Some of the
best streams are river Tiere and its branches, two miles
distant; Scott’s River, seven miles; Thom’s Brook, fifteen
miles; and Grand River, a like distance. There are salmon
in the last-named river.
A good deal has been said about the indifferent roads
in Nova Scotia, but those about here are well made,
and from the nature of the soil do not become muddy.
Among attractive drives are those to river Bourgeois,
five miles; and to Grand River along the shore through
l’Ardoise. A favourite water excursion, on the Bras d’Or
side, is to the quarries at Marble Mountain, a distance of
fifteen miles. On the way thither is Point Michaux, or
Cape Himlopen or Hinchinbroke. It has all three names,
but is usually known by the first one. Here there is a
beautiful driving beach, two miles long, and an eighth of
a mile wide. It is very level, and of such hard, smooth
sand that the hoofs of the horses make little more impression
on it.
St. Peter’s Inlet is studded with islands clad in verdure,
and there are times when the scene is unusually beautiful,
even for a land of which beauty is everywhere. On a calm
summer morning, for instance, the peaceful sea is a mirror
which reflects in rare beauty the red, purple, and golden hues
which the sunlight gives the hills. On the land the colours
are strangely bright, while the waters soften and blend the
whole into a picture which must ever linger in the memory.
[Illustration: LA BRAS D’OR LAKE. (CAPE BRETON.)]
St. Peter’s may also be reached from Point Tupper on
the opposite side of the Strait of Canso, by taking the Cape
Breton Railway, a journey of thirty-one miles.
The tides run through the Strait of Canso at the rate of
from four to six miles an hour, and they defy the tide-tables
by rising superior to all rules by which men look for
tides to be governed. Their course is determined to a
large extent by the force and direction of the winds outside,
and they may flow in one direction for days at a time.
The tourist can tell whether the steamer is going with
or against the tide by watching the spar buoys and noting
the direction in which they point.
Arichat, situated on Isle Madame, with about seven
hundred souls, was formerly the seat of the Bishop of
Arichat, until the see was removed to Antigonish. It
is built on high ground, and has a fine harbour. There
is another good harbour at West Arichat. The situation
of the island makes the climate delightfully cool
in the warmest of weather. This place was one of the
important stations of the Jersey fishing houses, and the
Robins still have an establishment here. In the township
are many Acadian French, some of the families having
come here from Grand Pré at the time of the dispersion.
Houses are easily procured at Arichat by those who wish
to reside here during the summer, and several Americans
have been regular visitors for years, making the village a
centre from which to take various trips through the
surrounding country.
So far I have spoken of the middle and the eastern
Cape Breton. But there is, as the map will show you,
another side, the western, where is situated the county of
Inverness, whose coast-line stretches from St. George’s Bay
northward to Cape Lawrence, All this region settled by
Highlanders and French has been only recently opened up
by the Inverness Railway, a line built to tap the great
coal deposits in the vicinity of Port Hood, Mabou and
Broad Cove. This line starts from the Intercolonial Railway
at Point Tupper, and has opened up a fine piece of
farming country, and provided a winter outlet for the
large quantities of coal being produced at Port Hood and
Inverness. The road follows the coast-line for the entire
distance from Port Hastings to Inverness, and an exceedingly
fine panorama of land and sea is disclosed to the
view. A daily passenger service has been inaugurated,
connection with the Intercolonial being made at Point
Tupper.
A steamer runs from Mulgrave to Port Hood, a distance
of twenty-six miles, on regular days of each week.
Port Hood is near the entrance to the Bay, and from there
the journey may be continued to Mabou, Inverness,
Margaree Harbour, and Cheticamp. My solitary fellow
passenger was a gentleman from Antigonish, whom I neither
flatter nor depreciate when I say he was the most typical
Highlander I have ever seen. Tall and spare, with florid
skin and high cheek-bones, and hair and beard which a
decade ago or so must have been violently red, the beard
jutting out in true Highland aggressiveness, it was something
of a surprise to me to find that he did not say
“whateffer,” and an eternal disappointment that he spoke
anything but Gaelic. But indeed he had the Highland
brevity of speech, and glowered about him from under his
bushy eyebrows much as such a man should properly glower
when in kilts, and with a claymore in his hand.
“Who is that man?” I asked the conductor of the
train.
“That—oh, that’s old MacTavish.”
“I knew it.”
“Then what did you ask for?”
“I mean, I knew he must be a MacTavish. I was
afraid you would tell me he was a Mr. Tompkins of
Boston. He seems preoccupied.”
“Occupied? Aye, he’s a busy man is Senator
MacTavish.”
I could not restrain a start of surprise. In the old
days, a couple of centuries ago, in the old and real Inverness
country, this man would have been a chieftain of
freebooters and cattle-lifters, and doubtless played his part
as deftly, as daring, and as dourly as under the changed
conditions of our modern civilisation he plays it now.
Afterwards, I had some conversation with Mr. MacTavish,
and not once I am glad to say did he abandon his character
or fall away from the high opinion I had formed of him
at sight. I only mention this trifling _rencontre_, because
shortly after my return to England, I read a telegraphic
despatch in the _Times_ to the effect that “Senator X. Y.
MacTavish has been appointed to”—well, to very high
office.
The train has arrived at Port Hood, which is the county
town of Inverness. There are not many of the amenities
of life here, and one could not reasonably expect more,
because the two thousand souls here are in the swirl and
centre of the Port Hood coal boom. The property worked
at present by the company is on the coast, sixteen square
miles in extent, and there are two principal seams, some
seven or eight feet thick, supposed to contain nearly
150,000,000 tons of coal, which are being mined at the
rate of some 500 tons a day. Yet Port Hood is already
looking up as a summer resort, and many denizens of towns
and cities who wish to leave the beaten track have fixed
upon this place and its picturesque environs as a capital
centre for boating, fishing, and bathing.
Coal is the great factor of Cape Breton, and it would
make a Londoner’s mouth water to see how cheap and
accessible it is. There are places where, as has been said, a
man can, without leaving his farm, go down to the seashore
and dig his winter’s coal as easily as he digs his
potatoes. Coal in abundance is frequently struck in digging
for fence posts, and around Port Hood in Inverness county
you are sure to strike it if your spade goes deep enough.
There are a couple of islands off Port Hood, one of
which had a great interest for me. It is called Smith’s
Island; that this is no arbitrary title will be gathered from
the fact that of the fifteen families on Smith’s Island,
thirteen are Smiths. But then, of course, Smith is almost
as much Highland as MacGregor. These thirteen families
of Smith have divided the 500 acres of the island into farms,
producing four or five tons of hay to the acre, root crops,
and maize. Each family goes in for sheep-rearing, and
there are fifty or sixty cows besides. But this does not
exhaust the resources of the Smiths; they are fishermen,
and make use of the fish offal as manure, which practically
accounts for the land’s fertility, and there is a flourishing
business in lobster canning. The fish caught is not dried
exclusively, as was formerly the case, but a proportion of it
is shipped fresh in government bait freezers and refrigerator
cars, a system which is happily coming into vogue throughout
Maritime Canada. Now I feel sure that if a similar colony
of Browns, Jones, and Robinsons would emigrate and settle
on Outer or any of the other islands about the coast, a like
prosperity awaits them.
From Port Hood the railway goes on northward to
Mabou, and to still further coal-fields. Beautifully situated
is Mabou on a stream a few miles from Mabou harbour,
and there is an abundance of trout fishing hereabouts.
Past Mabou the line skirts Lake Ainslee, the largest
freshwater lake in Cape Breton.
Inverness, now the chief town of Western Cape Breton
Island, is only about a decade old. In 1900 the population
was less than 100. In 1911 it had nearly 3000 souls.
The locality was formerly known as “Broad Cove
Mines,” or “Loch Leven,” and it was originally the
“Shean.” “Shean” means, I was told, the “home of the
fairies.” It nestles under the towering heights of lofty Cape
Mabou, close to the waters of the gulf.
The inhabitants of Inverness are already infected with
the spirit of enterprise, and have a gude conceit of themsel’.
Take the following description by a local writer:—“Looking
down upon this site, the town of Inverness,
much like a picture on the bottom of a piece of eighteenth
century crockery ware, you behold by night the electrically
bejewelled homeplace of about 4000 souls; by day you
note that the erstwhile fir-thatched roof of the home of
the fairies is covered over with workshop and cottage,
bank-head and power-house, halls, schools, and churches, the
homeplace of the modern fairy and his co-workers in other
avocations—the homeplace of the hard-working, thrifty,
fearless and frugal coal-miner and his family.”
Is not that wonderful? And yet there are people—even
Canadians—who say Nova Scotia is not going ahead
fast enough!
From Cheticamp, where is an old establishment of the
Jersey fishing firms, the coast becomes higher, barer, and
more rugged, and more dangerous to mariners, until Cape
Lawrence is reached. Of this coast it was said long ago:
“The north-west storms of November and December hurry
many a vessel on to this long straight lee-shore, where the
wretched crews, even if they effect a landing, wander in
ignorance of the course to be taken, until their limbs are
frozen, and they are obliged to resign themselves to their
fate. In some instances they have succeeded in reaching the
settlements to the southward, though eventually with the
loss of hands and feet. Often, however, the only record of
their distress is the discovery of their bones, whitening on
the shore.” I am glad to say these tragedies are very infrequent
nowadays, owing to a greater knowledge of the
coast and the interior, and also to the existence of settlements
hereabouts. The northern extremity of the island
is only eight miles wide, that being the distance between
Cape St. Lawrence and Cape North, the intervening shore
forming a crescent, the land southwards sloping down to
the water, and sheltered by the two capes. It is said to be
of good quality, and, indeed, agriculture and grazing are
not neglected there.
[Illustration: LANDSCAPE NEAR STELLARTON.]
Cape North has been called the Watch Tower of the
Gulf of St. Lawrence, but this was before the Straits of
Belle Isle came to be so generally used. It is the northernmost
bulwark of New Scotland, a promontory two miles
wide, extending four miles into Cabot Strait.
Who, standing on the promontory of Cape North, can
look unmoved on that terrible island of St. Paul, which
looms up ten miles to the north-east? This barren, rocky
isle shares with Cape Sable the infamy of having been the
grave of thousands of brave men. St. Paul, since the
erection of a suitable lighthouse, has been largely robbed of
its terrors for the living, but nothing can blot out the
memory of the past. I have now all but completed my
itinerary of New Scotland. From one extremity of the
peninsula to the other had I travelled and remarked the
people and the prospect. There is still an important corner,
where it joins the New Brunswick mainland, undescribed.
Let us retrace our steps.